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asthma

Dietary factors associated with asthma and allergic rhinitis in teenagers – (03-26-01)

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Dietary factors associated with asthma and allergic rhinitis in teenagers

With the wealth of information relating diet to allergies and asthma, it is sad that so few of the patients with these conditions are informed of natural ways to reduce or eliminate symptoms. Everyone is told to avoid the common environmental contaminants such as pet dander, dust mites and cigarette smoke, but this items are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to managing these conditions naturally. This study linked animal foods as contributors to the patients’ symptoms. Interestingly, fatty fish was also a contributor. It would be interesting to see the type of fish; cold water fish are generally less likely to have heavy metals and parasites when compared to their fresh and farm raised cousins.

Synergy : Clinical & Experimental Allergy 31 (2), 259-264

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Heart Disease Risks Higher for All Asthma Patients – (04-09-01)

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Heart Disease Risks Higher for All Asthma Patients

Still think our life expectancy is going to increase? Look at the number of children developing asthma and how much those numbers are increasing. No we see that patients with asthma have a 33% increase in likelihood to develop or die from heart disease. Considering that evidence suggests that asthma is an inflammatory condition, and that inflammation has been linked to heart disease, this correlation is no great leap. What this does mean is that we must stop covering up the symptoms in all of today’s chronic diseases and address the underlying biochemical faults.

(American Heart Association’s 41st Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention) Carlos Iribarren, MD, MPH, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente, found that nonsmoking patients with asthma were 33% more likely to develop — or die from — heart disease than nonsmoking patients without asthma. “This means that asthmatic patients and their doctors should be particularly careful,” says Dr. Iribarren, “not only about managing their asthma, but also about managing cardiovascular risk factors such as blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar.”Dr. Iribarren’s research was prompted by an interest in the “increasing realization,” as he puts it, “that heart disease is an inflammatory process. Since asthma is an inflammatory disease as well, we were interested in finding out if asthma patients had an increased risk of heart disease.”Earlier studies have indicated an excess cardiovascular mortality among patients with asthma. What is new is that the connection — and the risks — appear to be there even for nonsmokers. There have been prior studies of the link between asthma and heart disease, mostly in Europe, but none of them looked specifically at nonsmokers.”The reason to study nonsmokers is to rule out the strong influence of smoking on both asthma and heart disease,” says Dr. Iribarren. “This is an important question because asthma affects about 6% of the general population, and heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the US.”

Is the Chiropractic Subluxation Theory a Threat to Public Health? – (05-03-01)

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Is the Chiropractic Subluxation Theory a Threat to Public Health?

It still amazes me that articles like this show up in medical journals. We have pharmaceutical drugs responsible as the 4th to the 6th leading cause of death (depending upon whom you talk to..) and we still get articles like this. Go figure. Every day I hear stories from patients of things that have been done to them or given to them that stumps me. Just two days ago a patient’s 1 1/2 year old son was put in the hospital for rotativrus and given ANTIBIOTICS!! How about probiotics instead? Let’s destroy this poor child’s developing immune structure and possibly set him up for atopy and asthma; and yet DC’s are the threat? Makes me wonder how an article like this makes it through the peer review process for publication.

Scientific Review of Alt Med 5(1):45-53, 2001 Many chiropractors treat patients with spinal adjustments based on the theory that correction of vertebral subluxations will restore and maintain health. This paper explores the controversy surrounding the practice of chiropractic and discusses some of the dangers associated with inappropriate use of spinal manipulation. Treatment of infants and children by subluxation-based chiropractors who do not endorse such medically accepted procedures as immunization or use of antibiotics is especially a cause for alarm. Explaining the scientifically rejected chiropractic subluxation therapy and describing some of the questionable treatment methods based on this theory, a veteran chiropractic reformer concludes that if the chiropractic profession fails to abandon the false premise upon which it is based, it will remain controversial and some aspects of chiropractic treatment will continue to be a threat to public health.

Asthma increase could be caused by paracetamol use – (09-17-01)

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Asthma increase could be caused by paracetamol use

This is a perfect example of how many of the drugs that people take every day may not be as safe as they think. Paracetamol (acetominophen, Tylenol…) in this study shows a pretty strong link to asthma. Based on how widespread Tylenol use is, it is easy to see that this may produce some major impacts on community health. It’s always important to see why patients are using analgesics and try to fix the underlying problem so that taking the drug is not needed. Many parents use Tylenol to lower fever, and yet there are NO studies suggesting that lowering of the fever has any beneficial effects! Also interesting in this article was the finding that a child’s risk of asthma is markedly increased if one or both parents have asthma. What’s going to happen when today’s kids start having kids???

bmj.com Dyer 323 (7313): 592c

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Antibiotics are severely overused in pediatric practices – (04-24-00)

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Antibiotics are severely overused in pediatric practices. This summary shows that, for most respiratory tract infections, antibiotics are not needed…

Asthma rates increasing…could it be related to the increased antibiotic use described above? The evidence strongly suggests it may be a factor. In addition, many doctors say that the readmission rate to the hospital is dropping. Yes, it is, but that doesn’t mean that the child’s health is improving…they are just on more drugs to keep the symptoms under control…

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Corticosteroids May Protect Against Asthma-Related Irritable Bowel – (09-06-01)

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Corticosteroids May Protect Against Asthma-Related Irritable Bowel

A few things to consider here. The link between asthma and IBS is not all that surprising, except that I personally think they may have it backwards. This and previous studies suggest that patients with asthma are at increased risk of IBS. I would venture to say that it’s the opposite. Patients with GI dysfunction, whether noticed by the patient YET or not, would be more likely to develop asthma. Here’s my scenerio…patient has something happen early in life to disrupt the functional status of the GI tract (antibiotics, bottle feeding…). This ends up leading to a hyper-responsive immune system which in turn can lead to asthma. Then, later in life, the functional changes in the GI tract become noticable by the patient. As for the corticosteroids reducing risk of IBS in asthmatic patients, this gives me concern. Anti-inflammatories and steroids disrupt the integrity of the GI tract, and if the idea of using steroids to cut the risk of IBS gets out, we may be looking at a much larger problem. As the why these researchers found a reduced risk…I would like to see follow up studies confirming the results.

17th annual meeting of the International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology Asthmatics may have a slightly increased risk of developing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) compared with the general population. However, those who use oral corticosteroids appear to have slight protection against developing the latter disease, researchers reported here Monday. The finding comes from a study using data from the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) in the UK. The GPRD is a national computerized database of patient records from general practice. It contains more than 35 million patient-years of data and contains long-term information that can be used by researchers. In short, the study findings suggest that asthmatics are 1.3 times more likely to develop IBS than non-asthmatics. A link between the two diseases has been suggested in studies in the past. The results were presented in a poster by researchers from the Centro Español Investigación Farmacoepidemiológica in Madrid, Spain, at the 17th annual meeting of the International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology here. The prinicipal investigator was Dr. Consuela Huerta. The researchers used information from a random sample of 50,000 database subjects who had a diagnostic code for asthma on January 1, 1994. Patients were included if they were between the ages of 10 and 79 years old. Data for a similar number of age- and sex-matched non-asthmatics were used for comparison. People who had diagnostic codes for IBS, peptic ulcers, cancer, or other confounding conditions were excluded. Both groups of patients were followed until November 1998. Subjects were excluded if during the study period they became pregnant, turned 80 years of age, developed conditions that met the initial exclusion criteria, or were diagnosed with IBS (the endpoint being sought). However, asthmatics who were regularly taking oral corticosteroids at the start of the study were slightly less likely to develop IBS during the study period, compared with other asthmatics. Other asthmatic medications were not associated with any change in IBS risk. However, the data are not strong enough to show whether or not the steroids offer any protective effect, and did not show a difference between long and short-term use of the drugs, Dr. Huerta and colleagues cautioned. Further studies in the general population are necessary to confirm whether the use of corticosteroids, regardless asthma status, has a protective effect against IBS, researchers said.

ations for prevention, given the increasing prevalence of obesity and the morbidity and mortality association with heart defects,” Drs. Watkins and Botto conclude

Dietary fats and asthma in teenagers – (11-29-01)

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Dietary fats and asthma in teenagers

Not a big surprise, but this article further confirms that dietary factors unquestionably have an impact on asthma. A simple recommendation to avoid saturated fats and hydrogenated oils and increase intake of monounsaturated fats and vitamin C can make a large impact on this disease that is so common and has such a negative impact on the quality of life in those with the disease.

Synergy : Clinical & Experimental Allergy 31 (12), 1875-1880

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The protective effect of childhood infections – (03-01-01)

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The protective effect of childhood infections

This is a nice editorial reviewing the importance of childhood infections in developing a healthy and balanced immune response in children. Remember that, on top of antibiotics and a more sterile environment not giving an infant’s Th1 response a chance to develop and mature, vaccinations are leading to a unbalanced, overdeveloped Th2 response. This has the potential to lead to such problems and allergy and asthma. The authors in this article do make a serious mistake, however. They suggest that science come up with some way to mimic the body’s response to infections through vaccination or passive immunotherapy. I just have to shake my head at the arrogance of science and medicine when it comes to trying to improve on nature.

bmj.com Johnston and Openshaw 322 (7283): 376

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original article that editorial was based upon: bmj.com Abstracts: Illi et al. 322 (7283): 390

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